what’s happening in my house these days

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we finally took a great ride that we’d been planning forever with our friends Rik and Sherri and their two awesome kids. We went from Mill Valley to Tiburon on a clear and windy Saturday afternoon. The ride was amazing; only one challenging hill and mostly beautiful bike path, tons of people out enjoying the day, stunning views of the bay and the city to the south. Everything went smoothly and the kids all had a fantastic time. We stopped at Waypoint pizza and got the back room all to ourselves – the food was made even more tasty by our ride beforehand. After we ate, we admired the view for a bit before heading back home.

Tom has this great app called Runkeeper on his iPhone which tracks all the stats on your adventures – distance, time, pace and even elevation – using the phone’s gps. Here’s the screen for our return ride from Tiburon:

How awesome is that?! The kids loved checking out the route and looking at the elevation chart – speed certainly is variable when your riders range from six to, well, you know, more than six. I love the information design on these screens – they’re easy to read and beautiful to look at. So satisfying. All in all, it was an incredible day.

2. Walk and Wheel Wednesdays

As I’ve mentioned here before, I put in a small amount of time for the Safe Routes to School committee at our kids’ elementary school. One of the ways we’re trying to build participation in the program is to encourage a weekly walk/wheel/carpool to school day. We try to drum up enthusiasm for the whole idea by putting up posters and a table at the school entrance on the first Wednesday of each month. Whole Foods was good enough to give us some bags of granola to hand out to the students, and we’ve been stamping hands to show they participated. However, we’ve been struggling to come up with other ways to get the message out without printing up hundreds of flyers that will just be tossed when the kids go home after school.

Last week, I started thinking about edible advertising. So I bought a couple bags of cuties and some food markers and put the message right on the clementines.

They had faces on one side, and “Walk & Wheel Wednesdays” on the other. It was fun watching the kids trying to decide which face to choose, and I think they worked pretty well. Anyone out there have other ideas? I’d love to hear them.

Tom – yep, I’ll try to get that video up this weekend. I was just too sleepy last night.

John – sure! Thanks for asking. I’ve bookmarked your site – love that photo of Greg’s Electrified Big Dummy! And here I was feeling all excited about my teeny strand of LED Christmas lights. I clearly need to raise the bar a bit.

Joe – You simply cannot appreciate how dusty the bike paths get around here. It’s shocking, I tell you. Can you imagine – if I lived out near you guys, I’d have to haul a snowblower around instead!

the advertising on oranges is genius! i really love that idea, laura. i’d love to write about it on my blog, too. it is such a clever way to do a useful promotion to that audience. what is a food marker??

Thanks, Amy! Turns out you can buy these pens that look just like magic markers, but the ink is food coloring. How cool is that? I looked for them in a few kitcheny stores and finally found them at JoAnn’s. I bet a place like Sur la Table would have them as well.
It did make me excited to think of an edible promotion – catches the eye, sweetens the day, and no extra trash. Of course the cuties thing has the benefit of being healthy too. Best of all worlds. I hope the idea might come in handy for you too! In the meantime, I’m regarding every piece of food as a potential canvas…